Microsoft Demo Management System
Redesigning the content management platform behind Microsoft's global retail demo experiences across thousands of Windows devices worldwide.
Team
Jeremy Cimafonte
Services
Design, Product
Date
2024
— 2026
Overview
The Demo Management System is the backbone of Microsoft's Retail Demo Experience (RDX) platform, a content management system used by Microsoft, OEM partners, and retail partners worldwide to build, customize, and deploy demo experiences on Windows PCs in retail stores. As Product Owner and Lead Product Designer, I was responsible for end-to-end UX strategy, user research synthesis, product requirements definition, and high-fidelity UI design across the full platform redesign.
25K+
Retail Stores
210K+
Devices Managed
30+
OEM & Retail
Partners
100%
Self-Service
Publishing
The Challenge
Microsoft’s RDX platform powers demo experiences on Windows PCs across major retailers like Best Buy, MediaMarkt, FNAC, and JB Hi-Fi. But behind the scenes, the content management workflows were fracturing:
Manual & Error Prone
Content creation was not self-service. It relied on spreadsheets, PowerPoint decks, and raw JSON files. This increased errors, slowed timelines, and created dependency bottlenecks on Microsoft staff.
Partner Adoption Gap
One-third of retail devices weren’t running the Hub 3 application. Partners like Currys and FNAC built their own systems due to missing features and poor usability.
No Targeting or Analytics
The platform lacked content targeting rules, A/B testing, and telemetry leaving partners unable to measure demo performance or optimize content.
Fragmented Tooling
Management was split across disconnected tools. ReDECS for content, separate systems for targeting, and no unified dashboard for cross-functional visibility.
Research & Discovery
I led a multi-method research effort to ground the redesign in real user needs. This included competitive CMS analysis, stakeholder interviews, in-store retail audits (shop-alongs), and a review of existing DMS telemetry and support tickets.
Competitive Analysis: I benchmarked the existing DMS against leading CMS platforms to identify feature gaps and best-practice UX. This revealed that our platform was significantly behind in content preview, role-based workflows, and bulk operations; table-stakes features for enterprise content management.
Retail Audits & Shop-Alongs: On-site visits to partner retail locations identified critical pain points: demo content was often stale, mis-targeted, or missing entirely. Retail associates had no quick way to troubleshoot or update content, leading to poor shopper experiences at the shelf.
Stakeholder Mapping: Through interviews with Microsoft admins, OEM brand managers, and retail operations teams, I identified three primary personas with distinct workflow needs, authority levels, and success metrics. Each of these personas required purpose-built experiences within a shared platform.
Microsoft Admin
Platform governance, partner management, content approval workflows, targeting rules, and telemetry oversight.
Brand Partner (OEM)
Brand profile setup, product series management, localized demo creation, feature showcases, and campaign publishing.
Retail Partner
Store management, SKU mapping, device provisioning, campaign targeting at the store level, and test drive configuration.
Design Process
With research in hand, I led the design process across four key phases, iterating closely with engineering and program management through weekly reviews and bi-weekly stakeholder presentations.
Information Architecture & User Flows
I mapped comprehensive user flows for each persona, covering over 11 primary job areas: content model setup, demo creation and customization, preview and testing, targeting and deployment, approval workflows, telemetry, campaign management, device provisioning, and more. These flows became the structural foundation for the PRD and directly informed the navigation model.Product Requirements Definition
I authored the comprehensive Product Requirements Document, defining job stories, success metrics, data models, and acceptance criteria for each feature area. The PRD served as the single source of truth between design, engineering, and stakeholders — covering domain entities from Companies and Brands down to SKUs, Campaigns, and Targeting Rules.Product Design
I designed the full DMS interface using Microsoft’s Fluent 2 design system, delivering high fidelity design in with light theme and dark theme guidance. Key screens included the content editor, package list management, publishing workflows, targeting configuration, campaign builder, and analytics dashboards. Every component used was from the Fluent 2 extended library or crafted to ensure visual consistency with the broader Microsoft ecosystem.Development Collaboration & Handoff
I worked directly with the engineering team through execution, providing detailed Figma specs, responsive breakpoint guidance, and ongoing design QA. Post-handoff, I continued support to resolve edge cases and unforeseen UX needs as they emerged during implementation.
Key Decisions
Rather than building separate tools for each user type, I designed a single platform with role-based views. Admins see governance controls, OEMs see brand management, retailers see store operations. I used progressive disclosure patterns so users see only what they need at each step, reducing perceived complexity for new partners while preserving power-user efficiency. The navigation model mirrors the data hierarchy: Companies, Brands, Product Series, Models, Features, and Campaigns. This made the system's mental model immediately legible.
Impact
The DMS 2.0 redesign transformed a fragmented, manual content pipeline into a unified, self-service platform for Microsoft's global retail demo ecosystem.
Self-Service Content Creation
Partners can now build, customize, and publish demo experiences independently. This provides a self-service platform that removes reliance on Microsoft staff and accelerates content turnaround.
Unified Targeting & Deployment
Content targeting by region, store, device, and locale for device content replaces manual per-asset configuration with rules-based deployment at scale.
Streamlined Partner Onboarding
First-time user experiences for OEMs and retailers with guided setup flows lower the barrier bring new partners onto the RDX platform.
Integrated Analytics Foundation
Telemetry and campaign performance dashboards give partners and Microsoft visibility into demo engagement for the first time.
Learnings
Designing for a multi-sided ecosystem is fundamentally different from designing for a single user. Every decision has cascading effects across partner types, and the information architecture needs to accommodate conflicting mental models — an admin thinks in targeting rules, an OEM thinks in product lines, and a retailer thinks in stores and SKUs. The design had to hold all three perspectives simultaneously.
Wearing both the Product Owner and Designer hat gave me deep ownership of the problem space, but it also required constant discipline to separate “what should we build” from “how should it work.” I leaned on weekly engineering syncs and stakeholder presentations to pressure-test both sides and maintain alignment across a distributed team.
Scope discipline was the hardest skill. With an enterprise CMS touching global partners, the feature surface area is enormous. The most impactful thing I did was define what we wouldn’t build for MVP — documenting deferred features with clear rationale — so the team could ship a focused, reliable first release rather than an overloaded one.
